Thank goodness! Skate was back to his usual greatness last night. His extended trot was back to a nice cadenced working trot (which still feels fast, but my instructor tells me its fine, its just that he's got such a short back he seems to be working overtime).
I've been bad and decided I have to canter. My justification is that he's finally getting the contact thing so I might as well move on to keep things interesting...sounds good, hmm? Anyhoo, I asked him to canter from a nice working trot and got the godawful outta control trot. So I rethought my strategy. I decided to do loads of trot, walk, then immediately back to trot - this is my theory: he hates leg aids and the canter cue especially seems to piss him off (I do have a tendency to combine the dreaded leaning with a too strong canter cue, so that doesn't help!). If I can get him quietly accepting my go forward aids, he'll quietly accept my go canter aid, too. Magically, it worked! I got a couple of quiet working trot to balanced canter with NO godawful outta control trotting, so I praised lavishly and let him walk. He seemed pleased with himself.
I did get a wild hair and decide to take him over a little jump as we trotted around. My "adult amateur hunter" plowed through it! After setting it back up, we did it again, and left it standing. I'm glad he's so blase' about jumping...but come on...at least attempt to pick those hooves up!
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3 comments:
yay Skate! It sounds like you were able to get a good canter out of him. He probably really enjoyed the cantering and jumping, even though he plowed through the jump the first time, haha. Been there. He did it right the second time though, good boy Skate.
Woohoo, a jump!!!! Glad to hear that he settled down a little.
Pro also used to get really irritated with any sort of leg cue for the canter. What he preferred/prefers is more of a seatbone cue. Maybe Skate would too? BUT it sounds like you won him over with getting him used to accepting your normal forward cues. Silly boy.
Skate sounds like such a good boy! Good for you for cantering, and jumping!
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